Game & Map Screenshots 12

[Htlaets]

There's also a lot of empty space on that desk against the west wall. It also seems improbably large, like a person wouldn't be able to sit on that ottoman and actually be able to reach stuff on either end of the desk.

I agree with a lot of your post but I don't know about this one depending on intention. Decor looks rich-person-y and having a desk with a lot of empty space save a book could convey things about the occupant.

A person in a rich family that doesn't quite vibe with the rich trappings, didn't pick the furniture, but they don't have any intention of decorating it. It also draw more attention to what is on the desk and its importance. The person has minimal personal effects but there's a book given prominence.

Thinking about it, everything being a bit too big can actually convey a sense that the player is small, and I don't mean the physical sense, but a feeling of inferiority or that things don't fit.

Or maybe I'm waaay overthinking it, but I have seen games with the things are overwhelmingly big to promote a sense of inferiority aesthetic, and the character design here gives me that kind of vibe, too.

I'd say, thinking about it from that perspective, the thing that's off in the bedroom is actually the windows for being so square.

 

[ZombieKidzRule]

@clayathan I am generally less critical of visuals since I tend to look more superficially at things like this. I spend a lot of time in my regular job scrutinizing things for inconsistencies and discrepancies, from photos to written documents, so when I look at art or play games, I tend to try to turn that off and not look too hard.

With that said, while I agree with the previous comments that the bedroom might be a bit large by normal conventions, I have definitely see larger in real life and it doesn't strike me as being an issue. In fact, my wife and I owned a house where the master bedroom was probably twice that size, easily, with unnecessarily high, vaulted ceilings. The master closet was almost as big as some bedrooms. I'm not sure why the builder made it that way, but we rather enjoyed it. We had an entire sitting area away from the bed. I was easily the size of two master bedrooms.

And we looked at another house fairly recently when we were buying again with a bedroom a little bigger than the one you made.

Which is why the size of the bedroom doesn't immediately strike me as being too big.

I can't zoom in, but something about the night stand looks odd. I can't tell whether it is supposed to have legs and the space underneath looks strange or if the front is solid and that space still looks a bit odd. Perhaps I just can't see it well.

But a more general comment, it looks like you might have made all the art yourself. In which case, very nice!

 

[clayathan]

@Kes @ATT_Turan thanks for the feedback! i tend to agree about the empty space, it ends up being a problem when you're pixeling stuff yourself and still in the early stages of deciding how to map things, or what exactly you want to pixel for a room. for example, i knew i wanted a custom bed and diary for the protagonist, but i haven't pixeled any other bedrooms so far, so i have meager resources and ideas... i'll definitely keep this in mind when i go back to spriting, i think a couch is a good idea! i also remember wanting a throw rug but haven't sprited that yet, either. (the bottom most sprites are back views of tall cabinets, but those should probably be 2x2's, now that i look at them)

@ZombieKidzRule tyvm! the space underneath the night stand is supposed to be books. i think they're overlapping the bottom of the night stand too much though, so i might put more pixels between them and the night stand to make that more readable

@Htlaets oh, the big square window is a sliding door to a balcony... but now when i look at it, i wanna make it have a more obvious handle so it's clearly an interactable door, so thank you for pointing that out xD

 

[Kes]

@clayathan A bit more on perspective and placement.

RPG Maker uses a 2.5 perspective i.e. not top down nor face on 2d like a platformer. You therefore need to think about what happens with your bottom wall when it comes to carpet and furniture placement.

As a way of showing what I mean (because otherwise it can take a ton of words) here is a simple night time interior from my current project with a carpet that goes to the bottom wall and 2 cupboards placed up against it.



If we start by looking at the carpet you can see that where it fits around the fireplace you have the edging pattern. However, at the bottom wall it appears to be continuing. That is precisely the effect you would get if you really were looking slightly down over the wall. To achieve that use shift+click mapping. If you don't know how to do that, here is an excellent tutorial.

For the cupboards, I took the tops and sliced off a bit at the bottom, again because you wouldn't see all of the top over the edge of the wall. Your furniture against your bottom wall - because of the wall perspective issue - is neither against the bottom wall, because we can see all of it, nor is it a useful distance from the wall. imo it needs to be relocated. Perhaps into that big space so as to create a cozy conversation place?

EDIT you posted a fraction before I did so I had not seen your answer when I typed this.

 

[Htlaets]

@clayathan Ah, I see it now. Maybe you just need a bit of a shadow in the separation part? Regardless, my point was more that while all the other objects seemed to have a warping to them, the sliding doors seemed too square relative to them.

@Kes In this context Clay's style seems to have no fourth wall like the one in your example so it's more xray vision then peering through the wall which calls for different cues, doesn't it? Which makes the perspective more a fisheye movie set than traditional RPG maker semi-tilt.

 

[Ninjakillzu]

Some shots from the hospital I've been working on. The first floor has a general lobby, general examination rooms, the pharmacy, the ER, radiology, and surgery. I still have another floor to make!

 

[ZombieKidzRule]

@Ninjakillzu I think this looks awesome and WWWAAAAYYYY better than I could do.

I am not super critical, but one thing I did notice is it looks like the people at the bottom of the screen are standing on the chairs instead of sitting.

Now, I don’t know how to make a sprite look like it is sitting, but it is just something I think I noticed when I zoomed in.

But I like this a lot! It is very detailed and looks great!

 

[Finnuval]

@Ninjakillzu love the amount of detail you stuffed in those rooms and the overal shape and sizes of said rooms. Feels realisticm good job!

 

[Ninjakillzu]

@Ninjakillzu I think this looks awesome and WWWAAAAYYYY better than I could do.

I am not super critical, but one thing I did notice is it looks like the people at the bottom of the screen are standing on the chairs instead of sitting.

Now, I don’t know how to make a sprite look like it is sitting, but it is just something I think I noticed when I zoomed in.

But I like this a lot! It is very detailed and looks great!

I don't know how to make sprites look like they are sitting either! Not much I can do about that. Originally I had the couches facing upward, but I didn't like not seeing much of the people you can talk to (just the tops of their hair).

 

[Finnuval]

I don't know how to make sprites look like they are sitting either! Not much I can do about that. Originally I had the couches facing upward, but I didn't like not seeing much of the people you can talk to (just the tops of their hair).

Nothing you can do unless you edit the sprites themselves - or have someone do it for you

 

[KawaiiKid]

Some shots from the hospital I've been working on. The first floor has a general lobby, general examination rooms, the pharmacy, the ER, radiology, and surgery. I still have another floor to make!

View attachment 256646

For your lighting, I'd say you need to get bigger areas around the area that the light is affecting, and to not make them so bright. Atm they look like spot lights that aren't actually affecting the lighting in the room itself.

 

[The Mighty Palm]

@Willibab

Oo very nice. Did you make these graphics or are they from a pack : o

 

[Ninjakillzu]

For your lighting, I'd say you need to get bigger areas around the area that the light is affecting, and to not make them so bright. Atm they look like spot lights that aren't actually affecting the lighting in the room itself.

As for the brightness, I've noticed white walls accentuate it. If I changed the wall color, that would lessen it.

Here's just a quick comparison (forgive the cut off plant sprite).

 

[Willibab]

@Willibab

Oo very nice. Did you make these graphics or are they from a pack : o

I have made some things, but most of the things in this project is from various sources, just edited to fit each other.

The character sprite are from Alexdraws (Paid)
The color palette and enemy sprites from SeraphCircle (Paid)

The outdoor tilsets are from FinalBlueBoss https://finalbossblues.itch.io/openrtp-tiles. (Free)

All the other aspects which you dont see are also a mix of a lot of stuff

I also use some indoor tilsets that might look somewhat familiar to you

 

[KawaiiKid]

Doing the final dialing in of my lighting and wondering if I'm getting the vibes I'm supposed to be trying to get. Does this world look like a world that is perpetually stuck in twilight? I've tried a bit lighter and it always comes up as if it looks like it's morning, and darker it just seems like it's the dead of night, or in some cases, dusk but overcast.

 

[ZombieKidzRule]

I think so. Dusk, twilight (not the movie with the sparkly vampires), or pre-dawn all sort of look the same to me.

I don’t think it matters for interiors unless you have windows.

I think it looks good.

 

[ATT_Turan]

Some shots from the hospital I've been working on.

I see this is for a game in the cyberpunk genre, so take this with a grain of salt according to your aesthetics.

I like the design and layout, but I think it's way too dark in color. I've never been to any kind of medical establishment that had a black floor. Then the black floor with dark grey walls provides very little contrast.

Then the black ceiling with the black floors and very thin borders around the ceilings means the first time I looked at your screenshots it looked like the characters were just floating in black void.

If I were you, I'd play with the floor a bit. Even if you don't want to go full on white (which is pretty typical for a hospital), try a different color or, like, metal grating or something. You want the floor, walls, and ceiling to be visually distinct from each other.

 

[Kes]

@KawaiiKid I think you could do something more with the fact that it is perpetual twilight.
In such a circumstance I think people would have a few more sources of public light. From the small screenshot it's not possible to judge how many of those brazier type things there are.

Secondly, because this is twilight you will never have a lot of light for large plants to grow, certainly not 'normal' trees and bushes, so I'd have a think about what vegetation there could be. A dense-canopy forest is unlikely. This gives you the opportunity to use some of the more bizarre plant sprites that are around, as well as perhaps more of those fungi.

 

[Ninjakillzu]

I see this is for a game in the cyberpunk genre, so take this with a grain of salt according to your aesthetics.

I like the design and layout, but I think it's way too dark in color. I've never been to any kind of medical establishment that had a black floor. Then the black floor with dark grey walls provides very little contrast.

Then the black ceiling with the black floors and very thin borders around the ceilings means the first time I looked at your screenshots it looked like the characters were just floating in black void.

If I were you, I'd play with the floor a bit. Even if you don't want to go full on white (which is pretty typical for a hospital), try a different color or, like, metal grating or something. You want the floor, walls, and ceiling to be visually distinct from each other.

How does this look?

 

[Kes]

@Ninjakillzu Much better.
I know what I am about to suggest may mean a lot of work, but one of the big problems of the default sprites is that there is no sitting pose. All these sprites are clearly standing on the seats. It is relatively straightforward to make a simple sitting pose. Might this be something you could do?